Former President Donald Trump generated some buzz recently when he appeared on the Joe Rogan podcast and said that Google CEO Sundar Pichai personally called him to express his praise for Trump’s visit to a McDonald’s in Pennsylvania. 'I did McDonald's last week, and I actually got a call from Sundar,' Trump said. ‘This is the biggest thing we’ve had in years!’” he said. There has been intrigue and scepticism alike to this assertion as it weaves together Trump’s campaign strategies with his ongoing criticism of major tech companies.
Trump also stressed Pichai's description of his McDonald's visit as one of the most important things for Google in recent memory. Humorously, he joked that he had worked '15 minutes more' than Vice President Kamala Harris at the fast food chain during his youth, which she had claimed as well. Harris has previously claimed that Trump is lying about how long she has been a lawyer and that a McDonald's manager said she never worked there.
It seems to be part of a wider strategy to weaken Harris before the elections. Trump’s visit wasn’t a casual meal; it was a deliberate move to get noticed and get media attention. He said the public interest in the event was ‘huge’ and that ‘the crowd was crazy’, adding that it generated an upsurge in online searches.
But Trump's claims about calls from tech leaders like Pichai, Apple CEO Tim Cook, and Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg, but these claim have not been verified. Such assertions are often dismissed by critics as exaggerated or self-serving, given Trump’s history of making bold statements about his interactions with prominent figures.
